The development of a vibrant economy requires a safe and healthy food supply, sustainable land use, clean water, and pure air, among other things. Producers, such as farmers and ranchers offset their production costs with income derived from products such as grain, hay and meat. State and Federal regulations provide essentially no penalties for non-point sources of pollution, with the exception of indirect disincentives such as SodBuster or SwampBuster farm bill provisions. Environmental incentives for participants in conservation programs, e.g., EQIP, CRP, CSP, may not be sufficient to outweigh market driven production incentives. Therefore, the costs for sub-optimal land use are transferred to the public in the form of remediation costs, while the value of benefits realized by society through sustainable environmentally-responsible landuse management and optimal land use does not reach the producer.
A major barrier to the development of agro-environmental service markets is the dearth of biophysical linkages between management practices, measurable impacts on soil, air, and water quality and environmental regulations. The invention described herein is able to connect basic science research on biogeochemical systems, with ecological models, economic models and relevant legal analysis to translate that research into market-driven management strategies that not only maximize production but also produce environmental commodities that embody attributes of value to society.
An example of environmental attributes of the present invention is Carbon Emission Reduction Credits. An accelerating rate of change in the amounts of specific trace gases in the earth's atmosphere has the potential to modify the earth's energy balance, which may result in a variety of consequences. These trace gases are often referred to as greenhouse gases and include carbon dioxide. Although there is disagreement concerning the potential threats or benefits of this change, there is widespread agreement in the global community that it is prudent to enact policies to attempt to slow down the rate of change. At the same time, research is underway to predict the consequences of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and to develop the technology to economically limit those increases. All current protocols have established emission reduction targets that define a specific base year, e.g., 1990, and specify reductions for specific sources as a fractional percentage of emission rates from those of the base year.
The increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is a global issue. For example, carbon dioxide emitted from into the atmosphere from any source such as a power plant has a lifetime of approximately 100 years and therefore is distributed globally. As a result, at least for the issue of atmospheric greenhouse gases, the geographic location where the greenhouse gases are removed from the atmosphere is less important than the fact that they are removed. For other types of EBCs, the specific location of the emission reduction may be important. For example, the reduction of the transport of sediment in a watershed that has many man-made water impoundments, such as dams, may be of more value than the reduction of sediment transport into an unregulated and uncontrolled watershed.
One of the key provisions of many national strategies to limit the rate of growth in the amounts of atmospheric greenhouse gases is the concept of emissions trading. Emissions trading is a process whereby specific target emission rates of certain greenhouse gases are set for specific industries. A member of the industry who achieves measured emissions below the target rates may trade the difference on the open market to another who exceeds, or forecasts that it will exceed, its own emission targets. An entity responsible for measured emissions above its target rates may be subject to fines or other sanctions. The objective is to reduce the overall emission of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, even if the emissions of one particular source are not decreased, or indeed are increased. In the last decade, the effectiveness of this market-based emissions reduction approach as applied to criteria air pollutants in the US has been demonstrated. Fledgling attempts to develop similar systems for water pollution trades and for other remediation issues are in progress, however they have been hindered by several key factors addressed by the methods and apparatus described herein.
The unit of measure of tradable carbon emissions that has been generally accepted is commonly known as the Carbon Emission Reduction Credit, or CERC, which is equivalent to one metric ton of carbon dioxide gas (or other greenhouse gas equivalent) that is not emitted into the earth's atmosphere (emission reduction) or one metric ton of carbon dioxide that is removed from the atmosphere (emission offset) due to a human-caused change. That is, a CERC can be generated for human activities that have occurred since a base year, e.g., 1990, that have resulted in a reduction in the specified business-as-usual emissions of greenhouse gases.
For example, CERCs can be generated through energy efficiency gains of fossil fuel technology, substitution of biofuels for fossil fuels, or removal of greenhouse gases from industrial gas streams. CERCs also can be generated by sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide into land or water, e.g., by reforesting land or through implementation of agricultural practices that increase the storage of organic matter in the water or soil. Additionally CERCs can be generated by capturing methane emitted from sewage lagoons and burning it into carbon dioxide since one ton of methane is equivalent to approximately 22 tons of carbon dioxide with respect to its global warming potential. Additional CERCs would be generated if the methane was used as a substitute for fossil fuels. Other EBCs can be generated through the modification of business as usual management practices. For example, a producer can switch from pesticide intensive management to “organic farming” practices and therefore potentially earn water quality based EBCs.
With regard to other greenhouse gases for which use of EBCs would be applicable, nitrous oxide (N2O) is a greenhouse gas for which excess generation also has very serious environmental consequences. While the total contribution to radiative warming (total greenhouse gas effect) of nitrous oxide is less that that of carbon dioxide, its persists longer in the atmosphere. Indeed, it has been estimated that on the basis of the net incrememntal greenhouse gas impact per additional molecule emitted into the atmosphere, nitrous oxide has almost 300 times the impact on global warming as carbon dioxide. Thus, even though nitrous oxide has a lower concentration in the atmosphere, it is the third largest greenhouse gas contributor. Furthermore, nitrous oxide has a long lifetime in the atmosphere. Presently, nitrous oxide concentration in the atmosphere is about 300 parts per billion and is increasing at about ½% to 1% per year.
Although a small amount of nitrous oxide is emitted from coal fired power plants and in the manufacturing of cement, the largest nitrous oxide sources occur in ecosystems. From a process standpoint, nitrous oxide is produced as a consequence of nitrogen cycling in soils. In nature, fixed nitrogen that can be utilized by microbes and plants in the production of proteins, is at a premium. After water, fixed nitrogen availability is usually the next major limiting resource. Therefore most microbial processes in soil have evolved to conserve this valuable commodity. As a consequence, the emission of N2O usually only occurs during transitional times when there is a “system upset”, analogous to the flare for an industrial process.
Though nitrous oxide can be produced during the process of nitrification, the major source of nitrous oxide is thought to occur during denitrification. More particularly, nitrification is the oxidation of ammonia with oxygen to form nitrites (primarily by bacteria of the genus Nitrosomonas and Nitrosococcus), followed by the oxidation of nitrites to nitrates (primarily by bacteria of the genus Nitrobacter). During these microbial processes, some loss of nitrates occurs though leaching, and ammonia, nitrogen and nitrous oxide can be lost to the atmosphere. However, in practice, the nitrous oxide losses from fixation are small compared to the losses from denitrification. Moreover, losses from denitrification vary substantially depending on differing conditions, in ways not fully appreciated nor compensated for in risk assessment relating to calculation and trading of EBCs.
It may even be said that existing verification processes are flawed, with leakage a particular problem when accounting for nitrous oxide emissions. For example, in areas of varying geography, for example, uneven agricultural land, “hotspots” of nitrous oxide leakage can periodically occur, and such occurrences may not be accounted for, such as when for short periods of time, low lying areas may be subject to pooling water created by runoff, and such wet spots can create anaerobic conditions conducive to denitrification. Land management practices may not be implemented to prevent such leakage and indeed may exacerbate such leakage, let alone account for such leakage on agricultural land.
The International Plant Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assesses the scientific data such as field studies and modeling studies that measure and predict greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The IPCC then makes recommendations that are used in evaluating the GHG impacts of specific management scenarios and GHG emission reduction projects. With regard to nitrous oxide, the IPCC evaluation concludes that incremental nitrous oxide emissions (the secular trend) indicate a link between enhanced fluxes of nitrous oxide and the increased use of nitrogenous fertilizers. Further they have stated that increases in atmospheric concentrations of nitrous oxide are directly correlated with increased application of fertilizers. Therefore, it is likely that in the future carbon storage in soils will be discounted, based on leakage of nitrous oxide. In addition, this line of reasoning will lead to the erroneous conclusion that reductions of nitrous oxide emissions will closely follow reductions in fertilizer application rates.
Although a statistical correlation exists between increased fertilizer use and increases in the secular trend of nitrous oxide, field research indicates that nitrous oxide emissions are not uniform and continuous. Instead, emissions of nitrous oxide from soils tend to be concentrated in small spots over short time periods. In fact, most nitrous oxide emissions come from anaerobic areas where denitrification occurs agricultural fields. Therefore the currently-recommended mitigation strategy to reduce nitrogen fertilizer application rates as a way to lower nitrous oxide emissions is seriously flawed. On most of the land or on a specific agricultural field, only small plots, if any will actually respond to reduce nitrous oxide emissions. Therefore is greenhouse gas emission reduction credits or emission avoidance credits are awarded based on reduced fertilizer nitrogen usage alone, these credits will not result in actual reductions of nitrous oxide emissions and will therefore not be effective in mitigating global climate forcing.
It is worth noting that in agricultural practices, where water is the first limiting factor, nitrogen is the next limiting factor. This is why the application of nitrogen-based fertilizers, primarily anhydrous ammonia manure, is so prevalent worldwide. While some fraction of such fertilizers are emitted into the atmosphere (some estimate a range of ½% to 1% of the fertilizer), field research measurements that nitrous oxide emissions are in fact quite variable and emissions of nitrous oxide tend to occur in relatively small spaces over short time periods, and then emission stops. Thus, despite the extensive use of anhydrous ammonia manure and other urea based fertilizers, the largest portion of nitrous oxide emissions are not likely to be simply related to some fraction of the industrial fertilizer applications. However current biogeochemical models that describe the microbial production processes that control nitrous oxide are becoming well-understood. However the difficulty of extrapolating from the micro-scale and microbial-scale processes to predict nitrous oxide emissions over an entire field or land parcel limits the accuracy of current nitrous oxide predictive capability. This therefore limits the potential accuracy of the prediction of the effectiveness of specific landuse management actions to reduce nitrous oxide emissions. The lack of models to accurately link landuse management and nitrous oxide emissions also undermines the verification processes necessary for certainty in calculating EBCs involving nitrous oxide. In addition, since the global annual nitrous oxide sink or destruction rate due to reactions in the atmosphere can be readily calculated, and since the global distribution of nitrous oxide has been well-characterized, it is relatively easy to calculate the global source strength of nitrous oxide needed to generate globally-measured atmospheric concentrations. Also, since many scientists believe that the sources of atmospheric nitrous oxide are largely identified, Often scientists simply identify the general source, such as “agriculture” scale that source by total area weighted by an average nitrogen fertilization rate factor and divide by
In the face of the issues briefly described above relating to greenhouse gases generally, a market is emerging for trading CERCs, EBCs and other green tags. One type of CERC trading involves an industrial consortium, where each industrial entity determines a rough estimate of the number of CERCs generated by its activity or needed from others due to its activity. If an individual entity has generated CERCs by changing its business-as-usual activity, e.g., by reducing the amounts of greenhouse gases emitted, it can trade the CERCs and EBCs to others in the consortium.
There also have been entities involved specifically in CERC trading based on increasing the storage of carbon in soil. For example, in 1999 a consortium of Canadian power companies hired an insurance company to contractually obligate a group of Iowa farmers to twenty years of no-till farming. Based on general data, a broker for the power companies assumed that this land management practice would result in sufficient sequestration of carbon into the soil to generate CERCs. The power companies also purchased an insurance policy for protection against the possibility that no CERCs, or insufficient CERCs, would be generated by this arrangement. This trade was designed by the consortium of power companies to minimize the price that the farmers were paid. The difficulty and uncertainty of predicting these CERCs, obtaining indemnification or insurance, and banding together a sufficiently large number of farmers to generate a pool of potential CERCs large enough to overcome substantial baseline transactional costs and uncertainty whether the CERCs generated would meet current, pending or future regulatory requirements operated to drive up the costs incurred by the potential CERC purchasers, drive down the price paid to the producers and generally make it difficult to establish and engage in a market for CERCs by not efficiently maximizing incentives to producers and by not efficiently minimizing risks to purchasers.
Existing natural resource-based methods to trade CERCs generally share a number of shortcomings. Typically, the contracts specify certain land management practices, but do not require a certain number of CERCs to be generated. The estimated CERC values are highly variable and minimized due to uncertainties caused by using general regional data to try to estimate CERCs and by high transactional costs. Without a reasonably accurate method of quantifying CERCs generated, it is difficult for all to place a fair value on the trade. Also, trades generally have been designed and instigated by a potential CERC purchaser, or an entity representing one, and not by the CERC producer, such as a farmer or landowner. Further, each trade must be individually designed by the CERC purchaser to be consistent with current and anticipated legislative requirements and to maximize the likelihood that CERCs will be generated. Competition is also limited by the requirement of projects large enough to achieve economies of scale. For this reason, there has begun to emerge aggregators who attempt to produce CERCs by traveling from producer to producer with the object of having each producer sign a contract in which they agree to transfer ownership of CERCs to the aggregator, implement a specified management practice for a specified time period over a specified number of acres in exchange for a specified price. The aggregator who then makes general estimates of potential carbon sequestration, develops a project-specific verification protocol, and packages the CERCs into a “project”. The project is then marketed to purchasers through a broker who must convince clients that the project criteria and indemnification are sufficient to meet the standards of the specific country in which they are applied. In many Kyoto countries, a project approval board is designated and must pass judgment on each individual project. As a consequence, the price paid to CERC producers is driven down thereby decreasing incentives to engage in practices that result in carbon sequestration and therefore the market for trading CERCs is limited.
In the absence of a globally accepted process to generate, quantify and standardize CERCs, especially CERCs generated or projected to be generated by carbon sequestration in land or plants, the market for such CERCs remains relatively primitive, inefficient and uncertain. The existing attempts to identify and trade CERCs suffer from difficulties in quantifying accrued and projected CERCs, high administrative costs in quantifying and indemnifying accrued and projected CERCs, and the lack of a market for individuals and individual entities to effectively engage in CERC trades. These problems particularly restrict the ability of an individual landowner, or groups of landowners, to efficiently generate, quantify, standardize, market and trade CERCs.